Here I will post some short pieces on Sarala Mahabharata. Sarala Das is known as the "aadikavi" (the first poet) of Oriya Literature. He lived and wrote in the 15th Century. Mahabharat is his magnum opus. The episodes in Sarala's Mahabharat are significantly different from those in Vyasa's (Sanskrit) Mahabharat.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

THE STORY OF ALAKSHMI

This story is not from Sarala Mahabharata. It is from a minor puranic work in Odia, entitled Kartika Mahatmya, which was composed by the eighteenth century poet Mahadeva Dasa. The concept of Alakshmi embodied here is creatively different from the same in the classical texts.

Once, on being asked to compare
between Lakshmi and Alakshmi, the inimitable sage Narada is credited to have
said essentially the following in a fascinating, euphemistic language: it is
beautiful when Alakshmi leaves the house and it is beautiful when Lakshmi
enters the house. I do not know if there is indeed a puranic story that embodies this
observation. In the rich Odia puranic literature spanning almost four centuries,
a story of Alakshmi does not appear anywhere except in Kartika Mahatmya and there too rather peripherally. Her story seems
to be the great taboo of our puranic literature. Incidentally, isn’t it
interesting that she is referred to not in name but in terms of an epithet
(“elder sister of Lakshmi”) in “Sri Sukta”, the celebrated hymn in Sanskrit to
goddess Lakshmi? Was she referred to by a name other than Alakshmi at that
time? Very unlikely!

In his Kartika Mahaatmya, Mahadeva Dasa
retells the story of Alakshmi in Padma Purana, the only purana that tells Alakshmi’s story at some
length. The prefix “a” in “alakshmi” is one of the negative prefixes of Odia;
thus the word means, “anti-Lakshmi” (not just “non-Lakshmi”). Going by Dasa’s
story, this goddess is, in ultimate analysis, anti-Lakshmi in that she cannot reside where
Lakshmi resides. It might appear from the way they are related through their
names that the two are antagonistic towards each other. But it is only language
that locks them in that relationship, according to Mahadeva Dasa’s composition.

Which father would give her child
such a bad name as “Alakshmi”? Such inauspicious, negative names are usually given to a
child when his or her elder siblings had died early. Such a name is believed to protect the child
from early death. But this was not the case with Alakshmi. Besides, there is no
reason to believe that her father was unfond of her. Therefore we might presume
that this uncomplimentary name was given to her later by the composers of
puranas to please Lakshmi, and whatever name her father had given her was
forgotten. In fact, no one must have cared.

Alakshmi was born out of the mud
which was formed at the time of pralaya (the great deluge) when all existences in
the creation in their purest form got assimilated into Narayana and all the
impurities remained in the form of mud in the waters of pralaya. Time passed,
but can one meaningfully say “time passed”? Isn’t it grossly misleading, didn’t time start
with Brahma’s sristi (creation)? But how else can one describe that period
between pralaya and the manifestation of Narayana’s leela again? Thus was Brahma
was born, and he created the universe and in the world appeared everything
again, the non-living and the living. In terms of Kartika Mahatmya, the Creator god created dharma first; it
was for this reason that the mud that was the residue of the earlier existence of the
universe found no space for itself in the new world. However, eventually it was
born as Varuna’s daughter and she came to be known as “Alakshmi”.

Then the churning of the ocean of milk took
place and the beautiful Lakshmi emerged. To please Vishnu, her father, god
Varuna, got her married to him; thus his younger daughter married first. This
was against the custom. It was not that Varuna had made no efforts to get his
elder daughter married. But no one was willing to marry her; the goddess of mud
was uncouth and ugly. Now, was she a goddess? The poet Mahadeva Dasa does not
describe her as such. Neither does he describe her as anything else. But how
does one describe her, god Varuna’ daughter and goddess Lakshmi’s sister,
except as a goddess? What was she, if not a goddess? However, not to be unfair
to the poet, which god or goddess received no worship from anyone at all and
was ugly and powerless too? Which goddess could not avenge her humiliation and inspire
an osha katha or brata katha (these are minor puranic stories associated with some
particular fasts and rituals observed mainly by women, and at home) in her
name? And which god or goddess was aware that he or she had all the negatives
in his or her nature and would openly say so without any trace of virtuous
arrogance that is so comforting?

Now Lakshmi lived in Vaikuntha,
the abode of the Supreme Being. She was worried because her father was
worried.According to the custom, it was
the father’s responsibility to find a suitable husband for his daughter in case
she turned out to be unattractive. He simply could not keep her at home. If
this happened, he would earn papa (religious demerit). One day she told her consort
about her father’s problem and pleaded with him to do something about it.

Vishnu knew that he himself would
have to find a husband for his sister-in-law. He knew that not just the martya
loka, the world of the mortals, no loka is favourably disposed towards an ugly
woman. The Supreme god went directly to sage Uddalaka and asked him whether he
would like to be related to him by marrying his elder sister-in-law. He would
be very pleased to have him, the virtuous sage, as his brother-in-law. The sage
readily gave his consent; it was a proposal too attractive to even think of turning down. As for
his sister-in-law, Vishnu told him that in his view she was the worthiest of
all: sarba tahun shrestha. We do not
know whether the good sage was disappointed when he saw his bride at the time
of the wedding which was attended by gods and sages; if he was, he overcame it
and accepted her as she was. He knew it was Vishnu’s will.

The wedding over, the sage took
his wife to his ashram, but she found the place utterly unsuitable for herself.
The chanting of the sacred hymns pained her. The atmosphere of peace, serenity
and spirituality in the ashram suffocated her. Alakshmi ran out of the house right
on to the street. The sage was distressed to see this. He found her conduct not
only disgraceful but also completely incomprehensible. He asked her why she ran
out of home, why she was crying and what she had found so terribly wrong in his
ashram.

Then she told him what he never
knew: she could not live in a satwik (spiritually pure) environment and could
live in only a tamasik (spiritually degenerate) one. She could live where
people are violent, hate one another, are jealous of one another, quarrel among
themselves, praise themselves and engage in malicious talk about one another,
steal, practice no sexual discipline, and where there is the smell of cooked
meat. Mahadeva Dasa’s list is longer than this. No point in reproducing it here. In essence, she could not live
where there is cleanliness, calm, contentment and understanding, and where the
sacred fire is lit and sacred mantras chanted.

The sage was aghast. He realized
that he simply could not live with that woman. Such a woman would bring home
only unhappiness and kula (lineage) only disgrace and eventually become the
cause of her husband’s degradation in this world and in the other world too. He knew
what the shastras had said; one must never live with a woman who is
foul-mouthed, quarrelsome and negative. The virtuous sage did not hate her; nor
did he feel cheated by Vishnu. He had no complaints against anyone. But at the
same time he realized that there was no possibility at all that his marriage
with Alakshmi would work. She was not going to live in the ashram and he was
not going to give up life as a sage and neither wanted to impose on the other
the life one liked to live. He decided to abandon her. So one day without
telling her his mind, he took her to the woods, and there he told her that he was going to
bring her food. He never returned. This is one rare example, in puranic
literature, of vanavasa (life in the forest) which was unconnected with danda
(punishment) or prayascita (atonement). Uddalaka’s act of concealing his real
intentions from his wife as he took her to the forest was reprehensible. One
does not know why being such a virtuous person, he stooped to that. Perhaps he
did not want to hurt her. After three days of waiting, the reality of her
situation dawned on her and the helpless, abandoned wife started crying.

And this was no ordinary crying.
It was loud and piteous and painful, and it reverberated in lokas beyond the
loka of the mortals. It was the agonized cry of the unwanted and the rejected
for some suitable space. Mud cannot cease to exist merely because it is unwanted.
Alakshmi’s cry reached her sister’s ears in Vaikuntha and she was sad and worried.
She pleaded with her husband to do something for her sister, who, she told him,
had been forsaken by her husband and was all alone in the deep forest. He must
console her, she told him, and settle her in some good place where she would
lead a comfortable life, or else bring her to Vaikauntha. There are many
Lakshmi stories in Odia, but in none of these is the goddess of wealth and prosperity
as empathetic, considerate and magnanimous as in this.

Vishnu went to Alakshmi at once. She
was happy to see her bother-in-law, the Supreme lord of the universe, and
became calm. The Supreme Being told her that her sister had sent him to her. He
told her to come to Vaikuntha with him, a satwik abode, where lived those who had
lived virtuous lives and had received his grace. Her sister was in charge there
and she would enjoy all comfort there.

Alakshmi declined. In the
narrative style, so characteristic of the puranas, she told him - the One who needed
no telling - how she was born of the impurities that had remained after all
that existed became free of the fundamental gunas (attributes – here, satwa,
raja and tama) that constituted them, and as pure essence had merged into
Narayana at the time of pralaya. She told him that her nature was such that purity
and virtue suffocated her. Vaikuntha would make her utterly miserable. That
apart, she had always been jealous of Lakshmi’s beauty and in Vaikuntha, she would
be jealous of her sister’s prosperity, she told Vishnu; she said she would be in
great distress in Vaikuntha. As he knew everything and took care of everyone in the
creation, he should find her a place that would suit her nature, she said.

It is then not the case that in
Vaikuntha everyone finds solace and lives in peace; one finds it in a place
determined by one’s karma, as Mahadeva Dasa seems to be saying. Thus his Lakshmi said that
her sister’s suffering was due to her karma
dosa (consequence of (one’s) karma). But was it really due to her karma? Whose
karma was the mud from which she was born? That cosmic mud was part of the
process of pralaya. Alakshmi’s situation brings to mind the words of the great
Odia poet Jagannatha Dasa in his Srimad Bhagavata: sarpare jata kalu mote/
swabhaba chadibi kemante (you chose that I be born as a snake/ How can I
give up my nature?)This is what the snake Kaliya asked Krishna. In any case,
Alakshmi had to be given a place of her liking. Vishnu, the ultimate provider, found
such a place for her; he asked her to live in those houses where people
quarrel, in those persons who are cheats and liars, who bring suffering to
others, and relish the sight of others in pain, who have no respect for others’
women and who are addicted to the game of dice and who are unclean in every
respect.

And from then on, on every Saturday,
he told her, she would receive worship along with him under the Aswastha tree,
who was none other than a Form of his. In the entire puranic literature, this
is perhaps the only episode where a god is worshiped, thereby associated,
with his sister-in-law. In a fascinating way, Mahadeva Dasa emphasized the all
pervasiveness of Vishnu. The one whose inner eye is open can see him where
the bhaktas sing his glory and also in the dens of vice.